Aerogel

[ErlyRisa]

What happened too aerogel(s)?

 

If...I had a 3d printer I know what I would be casting.

[Murga]

What happened too aerogel(s)?

 

If...I had a 3d printer I know what I would be casting.

 

Ultrahigh surface area carbon aerogels power today's fast-charging supercapacitors. And ultrastrong, bendable x-aerogels are the lowest-density structural materials ever developed. Leventis's aerogels, known as x-aerogels, are not only stronger; they're also more flexible, waterproof and impact resistant. The downside is that x-aerogel production requires more hazardous chemicals and takes more time; these chemicals also decrease its insulation ability.   http://www.aerogel.org/?cat=39

 

 

AFAIK, aerogels are mainly used presently as insulation.  Cost is an issue, and just because they are unbending does not equal usefulness.  Instead it sounds brittle, requiring either a tight and hard package or loose one with small aerogel particles.  Bendable ones, apparently like the X-aerogels, are a step in the right direction.

 

 

Though flashy in an engineering way, until costs are lowered it is guessed it will be more a curiosity than staple.  3-d printers are unlikely to use aerogel anytime soon.  Rather staple materials which are easily worked and cheap are the obvious choice, meaning titanium and aerogels seem unlikely.  The above site mentioned this as a best bet to make your own, but note the hazardous material warning:

 

http://www.aerogel.org/?p=1467

 

 

Anyone know more on this issue?  It is not an area of personal past research.

Edited August 3, 2014 by Murga

[CraigD]

Anyone know more on this issue? It is not an area of personal past research.

Mostly because I think they look really cool, I’ve kept an eye on the aerogel technology for the past decade or few.

 

I find the back story/history of aerogels interesting. It’s more-or-less a history of recurring “whatever happened to aerogels” questions, where the stuff seems amazing and promising, then finds little commercial application or demand.

 

The term “aerogel” was coined in 1931 by chemical engineer Steven Kistler, according to some accounts motivated by a bet made with a colleague about whether they were popular. When precisely he succeeded in making the first ones is uncertain, but by 1944, Monsanto was making and selling crushed silica aerogel for applications ranging from home freezer insulation to paint pigment to a thickening agent for napalm. These markets seemed to dry up (pun intended) by about 1960, largely because something like it could be made more cheaply by vapor depositing (“fuming”) silica and other materials, rather than making gels of them and replacing their liquid parts with gases.

 

(See This and this Lawrence Berkley National Lab archive pages for more)

 

 

On and off over the ensuing decades, the stuff had resurgence in popularity for everything from rocket fuel storage to chemical cartelists to spacecraft dust collectors to electronics (supercapacitors and conductors) to car body panels (2014 Corvettes have it) to drug delivery systems, and more.

 

As the years have gone by, the density of aerogels of various materials has been lowered. I made this little chronology from a few sources

1943 silica aerogel  280 kg/m^3

1989 silica aerogel   30

2003 silica aerogel    1.3

(air                   1.225 )

2005 silica aerogel    1

(helium gas            0.1786 )

2013 graphite aerogel  0.16 kg/m^3

 

Note that despite recent stuff being less dense than air (or, at 0.16 kg/m^3, helium gas), aerographene it’s not practically lighter-than-air, because it’s not a closed, but open cell foam, so fills with air, making it slightly heavier.

 

Unlike silica aerogels, which are typically hard and brittle, graphite aerogels can be spongy and elastic.

 

One of the coolest recent proposed applications for graphite aerogel, which is electrically conductive, is as a high-resistance film covering for airplane wings that could allow the entire wing to be electrically heated at all times, with only a reasonable amount of electric power, and hardly any added weight. This could be a nearly 100% foolproof way of preventing wing icing, which is one of the major causes of crashes in both small and large airplanes. (See this 2003 news article)

 

 

If...I had a 3d printer I know what I would be casting.

You don’t need a 3d printer to make aerogel. Like Murga, I don’t think you can. All you need is some common lap equipment and supplies. This webpage describes 2 ways to make silica aerogel.

[PiSquare]

It is official - Chinese material scientists created a graphene aerogel which is the world's lightest material to date. It is seven times lighter than air and 12 percent lighter than aerographite, the previous record holder. A cube of graphene aerogel can balance on a blade of grass or on a dandelion seed head.